Was Limp Bizkit Good?

Like The Beatles, Limp Bizkit was a band that elicited strong, polarized reactions in others but not me. 

At the height of my Ozzfest-going junior-classman years, I liked them fine on the radio and TRL, and especially Wes Borland interviews in Guitar World-type mags. But I bought Soulfly and Disturbed and KoRn CDs and not Limp Bizkit ones. There’s possibly no reason for that, or maybe I sensed that I would personally feel less uncool later if I did (I was never cool). I’ve since listened to them far more often than I’ve listened to any of the above-named. Soulfly, in particular, is a prospect I can’t imagine wanting to throw on today, even if I still remember their Ozzfest set bringing out a succession of Brazilian percussion and hand drums to get the crowd chanting in Portuguese.

I’ve always said it from my pulpit until I’m blue in the face: People hate rap-rock because rap-rock bands almost always had a bad rapper in front. Or, well, a singer who tries to rap badly. Put a real rapper in front of a rap-rock band, and suddenly rap-rock becomes good. That should’ve been the takeaway from “99 Problems” 20 years ago. Zack de la Rocha and the Beastie Boys aren’t great rappers in the technical sense, but their music has endured partly because they knew their strengths and limitations, and partly because they didn’t try to sing. It’s not just the rapping that’s the problem; Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda doesn’t really make me feel anything, but Chester Bennington wasn’t really my type. Emoting went through serious growing pains around the millennium, and it went against a rapper’s objective to stay cool and focus on things like the pocket. So in rap-rock, you get a lot of singers with no subtlety and a lot of screaming with no punk in it. Limp Bizkit’s emo moments (“No Sex,” Boiler”) are at least good as anyone else’s, which will never be good enough for me. But they provide levity between sometimes-smart riffs and always-stupid rapping.

When the Limp Bizkit experience is operating at full capacity, I’d say they had the temerity to evoke a Bomb Squad led by Flavor Flav and no Chuck. John Otto, Sam Rivers and House of Pain’s DJ Lethal understood a competent if unremarkable groove. Fred Durst was never charming, but he could occasionally tap into a strain of obnoxiousness that could command your attention. Before Woodstock ‘99 cast a too-great pall, “Break Stuff” was a satisfying rant over two chords dumber than bricks. “Rollin’” and “My Way” kept multitracking his whiny voice into the ether for catchphrases that it isn’t hard to see moved crowds, permanently chained to some of Borland’s best work, which the idiosyncratic guitarist himself has sometimes all but admitted was a Faustian bargain. 

What I’m really celebrating 25 years after Limp Bizkit defined the musical environment of my junior-high era are the honestly blissful Premier/Method Man teamup “N 2 Gether Now” that Fred simply doesn’t ruin, Rivers’ rubbery bassline from “Re-Arranged,” and this band’s calling card, the eternal “Nookie.” Let’s sound like Patrick Bateman for a sec: “Nookie” is the Limp Bizkit masterpiece, their big theme statement, the definitive sanding-down of Durst’s worst traits and ramping up of Borland’s best.

We can start with the guitarist. The squishy blobs of guitar-or-bass coloring the groove of “Nookie” was indeed a four-string guitar fitted with both bass and guitar strings. The rhythm section chugs on a competent groove while Borland maintains this hypnotizing, bendy vamp through its unsettling clean tone in the verses and menacing sludge on the chorus. I’m not here to tell “Nookie” haters that they’re gonna find better deep cuts between the cracks of Limp Bizkit albums. If you don’t like “Nookie,” nothing about this band will be for you. If you can appreciate the uniqueness of the instrumental arrangement in “Nookie,” though, we can get into the Fred part.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. “Nookie” may be an asshole’s anthem where the girl cheats on the cuck who admits he was just using her for sex anyway (ever think maybe she didn’t care because she could tell?), but it’s Fred Durst’s least whiny performance. He keeps his tone somewhat chill, not even in the chorus dipping into that high, mocking register he overshot on Chocolate Starfish (which is otherwise their most listenable album), and the loop-heavy verses and presence of actual funk force him to actually focus on rapping somewhat, though the rhythmic stop-start and occasional attention to rhyme makes it more like a Christopher Walken monologue delivered as rap. Durst sustains sounding like a human being for longer on “Nookie” than any of his other songs, and even the loud chorus doesn’t come off like one of his full-on baby tantrums. But the image associated with “Nookie” was key too; he’s followed around city blocks by a growing cavalcade of women in the video, and it’s not completely unbelievable on this song. Planting the seed that women were listening to and digging on this dipshit is at least as responsible for his mainstream success as the terrible tragedy of Woodstock ‘99 scored by these childishly hateful lyrics was for undoing it.

 

VIDEO: Limp Bizkit “Nookie”

Unlike other rapping frontmen of his complexion, Fred Durst seemed to understand the thrashing whip of a boom-bap or syncopated riff and how to juice it with personality. He’s connecting with some kind of roots when he invokes Ad-Rock’s “Hey Laaaaadies” cadence on “Show Me What You Got” even if he’s Ad-Rock’s nightmare come to life. Ultimately how much you want to try and enjoy this band in 2024 depends on how much you’re craving a jolt of old-guard toxic masculinity caught between eras: late enough to absorb the value of George Michael’s “Faith” even if they played it for laffs, and feeling the need to get some approval from Black hip-hop.

DJ Premier didn’t want to work on “N 2 Gether Now” until Durst promised to work on his lame MCing, which is embarrassing but driven. It took some chutzpah to try and conquer the ’90s’ two biggest musical innovations — the golden age of rap, and rock’s most dynamic soft-to-loud era — in one fell swoop, and while Durst only truly achieved the feat commercially, he still did it while emerging from a giant toilet onstage.

One of the most say-what-you-will bands to ever exist, and it’s easier to appreciate them now because they became unpopular as quickly as they rose; their entire ubiquitous arc really only lasted from 1999 (or, if you’re generous, 1997) to 2000. Their very name has a self-deflating humor in it that I wish any of the frightening toxic mascs of today had the capacity for.

The true horror of Woodstock ‘99 wasn’t (totally) Limp Bizkit’s fault, but their retrograde music does deserve to be forever tied to it, lest history forget. Significant Other was their real moment 25 years ago, with their signature song, their mellower emo-er hit, their rap credibility hit, and their he-said-she-said bullshit. It had its uses; to quote one meme, Limp Bizkit were right that everything’s fucked and everybody sucks. Sometimes the stupidest kind of aggression is the only channel for inarticulate feelings, and who’s stupider and more aggressive than some obnoxious white dudes?

I’m not gonna tell you to stick it up your yeaaaahhh if you can’t appreciate them, but plenty of even the most obnoxious dudes know there’s pleasure in sticking it up their own.